The What of Web Hosting

Let’s Encrypt Supported Shared Free SSL Hosting Companies

This is a list of shared hosting companies that support Let’s Encrypt — the revolutionary certificate authority that has paved the future of secure SSL hosting. It’s here to stay and it’s totally free.

This is a growing list of companies with shared hosting plans that support ‘Let’s Encrypt‘. Get your WordPress blog, website secured in a matter of minutes!

Let’s Encrypt Supported Shared Hosting

Providing ‘quality-crafted hosting‘ services — SiteGround has often been considered as a front runner of feature rich hosting. Naturally, they were quick to jump on the free SSL ride and have supported Let’s Encrypt right from phase beta.

As Hristo Pandjarov, an expert from the early years of SiteGround responded to surprised comments during launch about sacrificing their revenue — “we really belive in this initiative and we’re glad our customers appreciate it“. And that’s just the kind of forward thinking attitude that gets my support.

Look for the ‘Let’s Encrypt’ tool in the security tab of your cPanel. Enter domain, email address and hit ‘install’ and you are good to go. Great for WordPress.

An old host with a massive user base, they excel in handling scale. As vice president Brett Dunst put it, they took a massive — “hit on the chin in lost certificate sales” by becoming the first major hosting company to support Let’s Encrypt.

Server location: Virginia (US).

Starting from: 7.95/month.

Starting specs: Unlimited domains, storage & bandwidth.

The outspoken team has come out saying that these free certificates are just as safe as commercial ones, and that customers can choose to pay if they still want to. As they are making the web safer, they continue to increase their fan base.

They have their own ‘secure hosting section’ in the DreamHost control panel, there you can add easily a free security certificate to your domain.

The geeky host which is actually one of the easiest to use — supported Let’s Encrypt from January of 2016. It’s all run through cPanel that most people are comfortable with, super simple install and automatic certification renewals.

They commented: Let’s Encrypt is a great project that we wanted to support. Offering free SSL’s is a no-brainer. It’s a value add that we can offer …, but also work towards helping securing the web one website at a time.

Note: For the time being you will need to contact them to enabled the certificate.

The company famed for blazing fast WordPress hosting, ‘WP Engine‘ introduced it’s contribution to make HTTPS ubiquitous on October, 2016.

Server location: US (Texas), UK (London), Belgium

Starting from: 29/month.

Starting specs: 1 website, 10GB storage, unlimited data transfer

Founder Jason Cohen commented, that “internet today isn’t the same as it was five years ago”, and that this is a “win for everyone”. Bringing greater security to visitors as well as better speeds, and SEO benefits for website owners.

Install is a click away in their ‘WP Engine User Portal‘ where you can easily add the Let’s Encrypt certificate to a hosted site.

Certificate generation and install has beeen made a piece of cake from the comforts of the Pressidium Portal. The letsencrypt cert will automatically re-new itself of course. You can find out more from this link.

Companies to look out for!

A2 Hosting — Quote: “We do have plans to support Let’s Encrypt on our shared hosting plans in the future, but we do not have an ETA on when it will be available at this time.”

— Now supported by all plans!

Final words:

While the technology has been embraced by many, one restrain is a lack of support by web hosting. One reason is a dependency on value added ‘up-selling’ — of which expensive SSL certificates and dedicated IP add-ons are an important part.

But inevitable change is on it’s way and there are many major players providing easy and unlimited SSL certification for their customers. With ready to go support for cPanel used by most shared hosting plans — all we need is more companies to flip the switch and bring free encryption to everyone under a few clicks.

Please note: All listed companies have been tested first. Know more supported hosting? If so, you are welcome to get in touch. However, I cannot guarantee a listing and it will need to be tested first.

Links: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links which I can receive commission for if purchases are made through them. Namely I have an affiliate agreement with WP Engine but I assure you it doesn’t affect my opinion. A humble thank you.

About Tim Base

With experience of traveling and working in different parts of the world — bringing insight into specific web hosting & internet related needs.

Caring through sharing.

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